COLLECTING SEA FISH AT MOMBASA 
7 
always of peculiar interest, and I took special notes regarding 
their maximum and minimum weights, for fish, I believe, 
migrate only for two reasons. Firstly, the fry of certain fish 
roam immense distances, seeking new feeding grounds and 
steadily increasing their size, and consequent ability of journey- 
ing greater distances in a reduced time ; and, secondly, when 
adult, they seek with their elders the suitable spawning grounds 
that may have been used for generations. 
The native fishermen are well acquainted with the seasonal 
changes of fish life, but always refer to the southern immigration 
as ‘ when the wind comes with the rain.’ 
The methods of capture that I employed were hand lines, 
trammel-net, seine-net, and trolling. But few species (compara- 
tively speaking) are caught by hand lining, and the best places 
are situated in deep water of fifty to eighty fathoms, which 
renders the capture rather laborious. The trammel is certainly 
a failure in these waters, as the tides are uniformly far too 
strong and the bottom too rocky to allow the net to fish properly. 
The seine-net often catches quantities, but for collecting a 
good variety of specimens it is hardly worth the labour after 
having tried it some half-dozen times. 
In the scores of fish-traps, both on the ocean front and in 
the lagoons around Mombasa Island, I procured many of my 
best specimens, and during suitable conditions of the tide I used 
to patrol the coast and look over eight or ten different catches 
in a few hours. Then the lobster-pots or creels gave me quite 
a few fish, which are not obtainable except by this method of 
capture. By the way I call them lobster-pots, but there are 
no lobsters on the African coast. The fish called lobsters are 
Cray-fish, of w T hich there seems to be two species locally. 
Now I should like to say a little about the Game fish. 
Unfortunately I arrived rather late in the fishing season to 
study fish from a sporting standpoint, and by the time I had 
about completed my collection the south-west monsoon had 
broken and it was impossible to go away out upon the ocean. 
I, however, had a little experience, and I have collected a good 
deal of what I believe to be reliable information from native 
sources. 
When at sea I had often observed two quite different species 
